Over my outdated corded landline, my dear friend, Berta read me a poem she translated from German. We are keeping distant as she’s 96 and can suffer from weakness in her lungs. I can’t recall the exact words but it was a series of reminders repeated over and over. They were paradoxes. Never forget our uniqueness AND what we share; our isolation AND our connection.
Continue reading “over the phone”Category: support
maybe you'd like to know about the GAIA initiative
Perhaps you already know about this initiative through the Presencing Institute. The acronym stands for Global Activation of Intention and Action. I’ve taken their wonderful mooc, u.lab, several times since 2015.

You can read about the background to this initiative in Otto Scharmer’s excellent analysis of the Covid-19 crisis at this link.
Continue reading “maybe you'd like to know about the GAIA initiative”Cultivating connection or just stashing away?
The desire to hoard, to stash away, to buy what you can for yourself at the detriment of others is an unfortunate extension of the ‘winner takes most’ mentality on which capitalism is based.
Continue reading “Cultivating connection or just stashing away?”receiving support

These images of trees being supported in their growth moved me. Posted by a friend who leads creative tours to Japan, the attentive gardening practices in use touched me deeply. It takes a sensitive gardener to offer the support that’s required.
It was particularly the notion of receiving support which evoked a tender feeling within me. The desire for support has been particularly insistent lately, yet the longing to find a healthy and helpful form of peer support has been present for years. Reading of enviable practices in the book, Presence, a decade or so ago, I have been involved in support groups of various kinds. They have all been helpful but somehow I still didn’t feel the kind of ‘supportedness’ I longed for.
Continue reading “receiving support”